“Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found.”
“Where was the pocketbook lost?” Sperry asked.
“If that were known, it could be found,” was the reply, rather sharply given. “Hawkins may have it. He was always hanging around. The curtain was much safer.”
“What curtain?”
“Nobody would have thought of the curtain. First ideas are best.”
She repeated this, following it, as once before, with rhymes for the final word, best, rest, chest, pest.
“Pest!” she said. “That’s Hawkins!” And again the laughter.
“Did one of the bullets strike the ceiling?”
“Yes. But you’ll never find it. It is holding well. That part’s safe enough—unless it made a hole in the floor above.”
“But there was only one empty chamber in the revolver. How could two shots have been fired?”